i am home today with some kind of throat infection. ive managed to go all year with no major illness, including a trip to the US when it was in the grip of flu fever (with no tamiflu injection because there was none in stock here). so of course, this last week, when its been so hot we erupted into bushfires, followed by snow and rain, has taken its toll. combined with working too hard, not sleeping well and irritation from hay fever and smoke haze, i currently have no voice. so im sitting here sipping honey and lemon tea and thinking about writing my job application.
instead i’m procrastinating and writing a blog post. i’ve been thinking about my last post and my tendency to say too much. i forget sometimes this is a public forum. sometimes random people tell me they like something i wrote, and i didnt even realise they’re reading. its a little weird, but also nice. but i do tend to write straight from the heart. i’ve thought about tempering it, but that wouldnt really be me. so the point of my last post wasnt really to give away too much detail about a particular person or situation, but rather to reflect on what its made me realise about my life and how good i’m feeling right now.
one of the criticisms that said person in previous post made of me was that i think about things too much, that i overanalyse. yes i do. my reaction to that criticism made me realise how much i value that part of myself. sometimes i need to watch the balance and get out of my head some, but at the same time my thinking too much means i think deeply about life, that i take it seriously, that i feel it and experience it fully. for me, as ive said before, thats what years of drug taking was about avoiding. these days, i embrace it all. it was a real revelation to me last week to feel that i actually LIKED that part of myself, that it was what made me who i am. so here i am, overanalysing again!
being a little ill though does make me stop and breath a bit. so today, i might not write my job application. i might just take some time to just be, to smell the roses. my knitting/nursing history friend in brooklyn wrote overnight and commented that we must be headed into spring now, with all the lovely flowers, and she’s right, we are. i love walking around my garden when its raining (it hasnt rained for over a month so i think im enjoying it as much as the garden is). so here are some pictures for W and J:
it feels like a mini rainforest out the front, with the magnolia fully covered
and the camelia in bloom
and this weird berry thing outside my bedroom window
let alone this single stunning red rose
the rain does play havoc with puppies though, i came last night to this
oh lila.
in the spirit of smelling red roses and trying to avoid the sheer foulness that is australian politics right now, i painted my nails red last night.
its a gorgeous blood red from sephora in NYC but im not sure if red nails are really my thing. i will probably take it off today, but it does look good against that grey yarn.
speaking of which, thats the northmavine striped hoody in spud & chloe
and i have failed yet again to read the instructions properly! i thought i just had to do 12 rows and then pick up the provisional stitches to turn the hem but as i was knitting i thought ‘dont you usually need a purl row for a turned hem’ and lo, there it is in the pattern
so now i’m knitting 12 more rows on the stripey side before i knit them together for the hem. i dont know how im going to manage with the stripes, i hate sewing in ends!
i’m taking a bit of a break from this gorgeous shawl
to get the stripe pattern established on the hoody before the weekend so i can knit it at guild camp. im only going for the day on saturday not overnight mostly because i cant really take a whole weekend off work right now (i know that sounds stupid but i need to get this job in the bag so i can relax!). but i will take the shawl with me anyway – thats almost a whole skein of fingering weight pure blend swans island so far and i have another skein i will wind up, i want to make this another superlong scarf.
in the meantime, i have finished a gorgeous little hat for Miss M in brooklyn. its now blocking and i hope it fits her
i bought this yarn at brooklyn general store with her mama, and i made myself a hat and mitt out of 3 skeins. now one skein flies back to brooklyn as a mini slouchy, an exact replica of the one i made myself. cute no? i have some other goodies to send off as well. i am so glad that W and i met at the conference in virginia, its been lovely to stay in contact since and get to know her better. and you can always trust someone knitting at a conference to be Our Sort of People.
so i figure if i just concentrate on knitting, and flowers, and sparky nail polish, i can try and ignore the fact that our nations leaders just turned the clock back to 1950, where if they had their way i would ONLY be allowed to think about those things.
as well as get in the kitchen and make them a sandwich. gah.
k xx
